A Small Price to Pay for Her

Chapter One – Two Different Worlds

"Is this you, Mrs. Holmes?" Mary pointed to a photo in the open album in her lap of what she thought looked curiously like a female version of Sherlock with long blonde hair. The girl was smiling, her arms spread out wide in blissful contentment. Mrs. Holmes moved from where she was straightening up the bookshelf to look over Mary's shoulder.

"Oh, wow. I forgot about that picture," Mrs. Holmes said with a smile. "I was just starting university when that was taken. That seems like ages ago..." With a soft chuckle, Mrs. Holmes sat down next to Mary and pointed out certain pictures as they went through the entire album, vividly describing each photo as though the moment had just happened yesterday.

"Is it bad for me to say that Mr. Holmes looks a lot like Sherlock in this picture?" Mary asked, pointing to a picture of a young Mr. Holmes smirking at the camera. Mrs. Holmes laughed.

"Not at all, darling. I daresay Sherlock took more after Chris than me with certain quirks and habits."

"Throwing me under the bus, darling?" Mr. Holmes called as he walked into the drawing room, smiling at his wife, who gave him a droll stare back.

"I'm telling the truth is more like it."

"Don't believe everything she says, Mary." Mr. Holmes's eyes lit up with humor. "The boys didn't inherit the genius from my side of the family, I can promise you that." He nodded toward Mrs. Holmes's book, The Dynamics of Combustion, sitting on the table. Mrs. Holmes snorted.

"I gave them the minds, but who gave them those smart mouths?" She pinned Mr. Holmes with a playful glare. He shrugged and nodded.

"There's no denying they're my sons, that's for sure," he told Mary, who chuckled as she looked between the elderly Holmes couple; such seemingly ordinary people, yet somehow they managed to produce two of the world's most brilliant people. If that wasn't a stroke of controlled fate, Mary didn't know what was.

"You know," Mr. Holmes said as he walked into the room to sit down next to Mrs. Holmes. "Linda and I had our share of trouble when it came to love." He gave Mary a knowing look. Well, she thought to herself, there's where Sherlock's deduction skills come from. Mr. Holmes held his wife's hand, squeezing it gently. "Seemed like the odds were stacked against us for awhile there, but we managed to make it through."

Mary smiled sadly, a sudden pang of loneliness hitting her as she thought about her situation with John.

"Will you tell me about it?" she asked, desperate to get her mind onto something else. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes looked at each other and then settled back against the couch, still holding hands.

"It all started back at university," Mr. Holmes began...

"Chris, I'm going to say this with all the love that I have in my heart...you're a bloody idiot."

Chris rolled his eyes at his best friend, Michael's, statement as they walked across the grounds of the quiet university toward the dining hall.

"She's not my type," Chris said simply with a shrug, which made Michael scoff in utter disbelief. "Besides, what does it matter to you who I go out with, anyway?" he continued as they walked into the dining hall that clamored with the voices of students as they all poured in to see what food they could scrounge to eat before class.

"There are guys all around here that would kill to be you right now, you know," Michael said as he reached for a tapioca pudding. "You've got some of the most beautiful women on campus following you everywhere, and you barely give them the time of day."

"That's not true-" Chris started to say, but trailed off at Michael's droll stare. "All right, maybe that's a little bit true," he finally admitted after a pause. "But I'm not really out to have a girlfriend at the moment."

"And that's where you're an idiot," Michael said as they walked to a table to sit down. "We're at university now, Chris. It's our time to really get out there and find ourselves girlfriends."

Chris stared at his friend. "Wait, wait," he said. "So coming here wasn't about getting an education so I can get a career, but about girls?"

"It's always been about girls, Chris," Michael said as if he was talking to a moron.

"Well, excuse me for trying to think of something a little bit more important." As a particularly tall girl passed by them, Chris quickly grabbed his pencil and notebook to jot down a stray idea, blatantly ignoring his friend's scoff. He barely noticed that other students had joined them, but continued to write, the world drowning away as he lost himself in the life and lines of his narrator. Out of the blue, however, a voice barked over the noise of conversation.

"So, you've never had a girlfriend, 'Olmes?"

Chris looked up from his notebook and to his classmates. Every pair of eyes around the breakfast table was on him, eagerly awaiting his answer. His eyes slide to Michael, who was looking innocently around.

"Why is that, eh?" Billy Hamish, a classmate, slapped his shoulder roughly with his large sausage hand, laughing a hearty laugh. Chris winced at the contact and rubbed his shoulder.

"Just haven't had the time," he muttered, scratching out a mistake and writing the correction to the side. He hoped the excuse was good enough to warrant them to leave him alone.

"But Michael tells us that you're practically a rock star with the ladies." Some of the guys jeered at the words that came from Freddy at the other end of the table. "Come on, what's your secret, Holmes?" Michael tried his best to get the group of guys to quiet down, but with a sigh of utter exasperation and annoyance, Chris slammed his notebook shut.

"See you all later." Getting up before anyone could say anything else, he left to walk through the main hall and to the English department, where he quietly slid into the lecture hall and into a seat at the very back. As he sat back and let the quiet murmur of the other students calm him down, a girl at the end of the row smiled and shortly waved at him. Not wanting to be rude, he smiled back politely, but got out his notebook to finish the paragraph he was working on. Without warning, the door slammed open and the professor strode in.

"Today, we're going to start talking about The Canterbury Tales…" The girl twirled a piece of hair with her finger, her piercing gaze burning into the side of Chris's face. He tried his best to ignore her, preferring to attempt to concentrate on what the professor was saying. Before entering university, Chris couldn't get a girl's attention to save his life, no matter how hard he tried. Now all of a sudden, women practically stalked him all over the place and he didn't have to lift a finger.

In his mind, there was absolutely no logical answer for why that was; but then again, women were a huge mystery to him altogether. Maybe it was something in him that he couldn't see himself. Although his ego couldn't help but get stroked at all the attention, his convictions for what he wanted in a woman held him anchored down. She would've had to capture his imagination, his curiosity before she could capture his heart. Because at the end of day, beauty was fragile and fleeting and he was looking for something deeper than what he was seeing around him.

Her hand could barely keep up. The answer flashed in front of her eyes, if only for a split second and she fought to write it down, pushing the chalk harder against the board. Everyone watched as she drew symbols and numbers, muttering to herself. Finally, at the very corner of the chalkboard, she finished the last number and slammed the chalk down, practically heaving at the effort. The room was eerily silent.

"Well done, Linda." The professor shortly clapped as he walked up next to her to examine her work. "You did excellent." She took a deep breath to calm her trembling hands.

"Thank you, Professor," she breathed, trying to hold back a smile. When it came to any subject, Linda's strength was most definitely mathematics. She could almost write a book about it all. It was her life, the blood that pumped through her veins.

"You can go sit down now. Thank you," the professor told her. With a nod and a glance to some glaring students, she went back to her seat and slowly slid in, taking a deep breath in order to collect her thoughts. Mathematics sometimes made her forget about her surroundings; numbers were much more appealing than what was going on outside in the real world, at any rate. What could possibly be more important, more thrilling, more exciting?

But apparently, some of her classmates didn't agree. She could feel stares from the other students from all sides and had to fight to keep her concentration. Linda supposed that they had reason to be jealous of her ability; she was admitted to university a year early because of it, so she was most likely the youngest in the class at the tender age of seventeen. Age, she was quickly finding out, mattered more than she cared to admit. Thankfully, after a brief lecture, class was dismissed and Linda walked out after the mass of students, quickly stuffing a scrap piece of paper with some equations into her bag.

"Linda!" She turned around and saw a tall, gangly looking boy jogging toward her. "That was brilliant what you did in there, truly brilliant!" He held out his hand. "Michael James. I don't think I've ever talked to you before."

"No, you haven't." She shook his hand. "I'm sorry, I'm not so good with meeting people."

"Well, who needs people skills when you've got maths skills like yours?" Michael's face lit up with a huge grin.

"Oh, it was nothing." She waved his compliment away, but smiled all the same. "People act as though I'm some sort of prodigy, but I'm just really good at mathematics is all."

"Well, all the same…" Michael shrugged. "Can I walk you to your next class?"

"Sure." Linda and Michael walked down the somewhat crowded hall, dodging people as they ran by them. Michael occasionally looked as though he was going to say something, but he kept his mouth shut, looking away at random objects or people. After some uncomfortable minutes of silence, they stopped in front of a Chemistry lab.

"This is it." She turned to him with a shy smile. Thank you for walking with me, Michael."

"It's no trouble, no trouble at all, Linda." He paused for a second, looking as though he wanted to say something, but shook his head. "I'll see you on Wednesday," he finally said, turning around to walk away before she could say anything. With a small shrug, Linda opened the door to the Chemistry lab and walked inside.

Another F.

Chris threw his paper down and rubbed his tired eyes, briefly stopping to look at the large red F that graced the top of his math test. Maths was never his strong point, but an F? His mother would have his head on a platter when she found out. She was always the meddling type. He looked around the small room in which Michael and he lived. Books flowed out everywhere, but there wasn't one book about not to fail a math test anywhere around.

Chaucer isn't of help at this point, he thought bitterly as he laid his head down on the desk.

Suddenly, the door opened and Michael walked into the room, shutting the door behind him and throwing his books down on the bed.

"Hi," Chris said glumly, tossing the test into the bin. Michael's brow furrowed, and then relaxed.

"Another F, huh?"

"When will these universities understand that English and maths don't mix?" Chris groaned, leaning back into his chair and biting down on his knuckles gently. "At this rate, I'll never make it out of here."

"Don't give up, mate." Michael sat up and watched his friend. "Everyone has that one class that drives them nuts. Yours just happens to be maths. Imagine those of us on the other side of the coin. You write poems and papers like it's nothing, but for me it's like drawing blood."

Chris smiled against his fist, and then got serious again. "What am I going to do? If I fail this class, I'm going to be in so much trouble."

"You could always find a tutor. Get some extra help."

"A tutor?" Chris turned around to look at Michael, who was busy looking for something in his bag.

"Well, not me," Michael immediately said, pulling what looked like a bar of chocolate out of his bag. "I've got too much going on already, but maybe you can find somebody in the maths department to help you out."

Chris pursed his lips, and then shook his head. "Maybe, I don't know." He turned back around and got back out his notebook again, putting the pencil on the paper to start writing. He willed himself to write anything, anything at all, but he wasn't finding one shred of inspiration. With a groan of frustration, he tossed his notebook on the desk, got out of the chair and flopped down on his bed on his back, staring at the ceiling. Maybe it wouldn't be horrible to get extra help, he thought to himself as he rolled over to stare at the wall, content to just sulk for a while...